A STUDY OF THE EFFECT OF COLLABORATIVE PROCESS-BASED WRITING ON INDIVIDUAL WRITING ABILITY: THE CASE OF IRANIAN INTERMEDIATE EFL LEARNERS

The present study aimed to examine the effect of collaborative process-based writing on individual writing ability among Iranian EFL learners. On the other hand, the present study was an attempt to investigate the effect of collaboration on the writing ability of Iranian intermediate EFL learners. To achieve the goal of the study ۷۵ learners were pooled out from among the ۹۰ learners who were learning English at two institutes in Ahvaz. The researcher used OPT in order to select homogeneous participants. The sampled participants were divided into three groups. The first experimental group received collaborative process-based writing approach. The second experimental group received non-collaborative process-based instruction and the third group was a control group, which received a product-based instruction. The results of the tests were compared using the SPSS software. The obtained results showed that there was a significant difference between collaborative group and non-collaborative group in writing ability. This study demonstrated that the collaborative process-based instruction had a better performance than the non-collaborative process-based group. This table also showed that the collaborative group outperformed significantly the control group. Moreover, there was a significant difference between the non-collaborative group and the control group. The non-collaborative group outperformed significantly the control group. This study provided a number of positive implications for language teachers, syllabus designers and learners.